4 Tarzan of the Apes
you the story as I painstakingly pieced it out from these sev-
eral various agencies.
If you do not find it credible you will at least be as one
with me in acknowledging that it is unique, remarkable,
and interesting.
From the records of the Colonial Office and from the
dead man’s diary we learn that a certain young English no-
bleman, whom we shall call John Clayton, Lord Greystoke,
was commissioned to make a peculiarly delicate investiga-
tion of conditions in a British West Coast African Colony
from whose simple native inhabitants another European
power was known to be recruiting soldiers for its native
army, which it used solely for the forcible collection of rub-
ber and ivory from the savage tribes along the Congo and
the Aruwimi. The natives of the British Colony complained
that many of their young men were enticed away through
the medium of fair and glowing promises, but that few if
any ever returned to their families.
The Englishmen in Africa went even further, saying that
these poor blacks were held in virtual slavery, since after
their terms of enlistment expired their ignorance was im-
posed upon by their white officers, and they were told that
they had yet several years to serve.
And so the Colonial Office appointed John Clayton to
a new post in British West Africa, but his confidential in-
structions centered on a thorough investigation of the
unfair treatment of black British subjects by the officers of a
friendly European power. Why he was sent, is, however, of
little moment to this story, for he never made an investiga-